skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Any toolkit that attempts to shoehorn a consistent experience on the web is doomed to failure. People have made efforts, earnest efforts, at solving the problem (dojo, ext, closure, capuccino). None have caught on and at the moment I'm assuming none will.

Bakground paragraph: I've been thinking about the issue since 2004 or so and always assumed that a widget toolkit would develop like it did for desktop environemnts and one or two would eventually win. The launch of mobile app development changed things. The kinds of apps being delivered were outright better than what equivalent web apps were delivering. Not the perf, I assume perf is going to be solved by better hardware and engine improvements, but what the apps accomplish. My conclusion is that every project has a semi-fixed budget of resources and that web developers burn roughly 50% of that budget on building a custom one-off interface solution for every project they work on. The obvious answer is components but component frameworks had not been catching on so the question is why.

The normally cited problem is the composition problem. It's incredibly difficult to achieve component isolation in the DOM and the Web Components effort is attempting to address. I approve the effort but I do not believe it will solve the problem. It's possible(ref yui3) to write components that will cleanly drop into pages that keep their CSS tweaks class based and that restriction isn't unreasonable in an app. Component use happens more frequently in apps but is not the default like it needs to be to escape the one-off tar pit. The issue is social.

The web's roots in documents mean that pretty much everybody wants a custom UI. All existing component libraries, following desktop toolit precedents, come as a packaged markup/CSS/behavior combo. These two requirements are opposed and that opposition is the core problem. I have never used a component library and not had to customize a signfiicant number of components. When doing so, I either have to maintain a private fork of the component or suffer in download/perf as the framework is super heavy and caters to all possibilities. The yui3 (and looks like current dojo) approach of core+plugin composition with auto dependency resolution is the best solution I know of but overriding is still non-trivial. Tweaking the CSS usually means having to build a complete theme and using generated markup is hit and miss.

My current thinking is that Web Components are a start but there needs to be a good solution for selectively overriding a part of the markup and for overriding style. CSS preprocessor features are also required to achieve styling goals efficiently. The rise of Bootstrap might prove me wrong by starting as an incomplete system, getting buy in (multiple themes, adoption for simple uses), and growing to a more complete one but we'll see.
PHP: Single Quotes versus Double Quotes
Good article. I agree 100%, except for:

Bluntly, if you don’t have training in sophisticated and marketable high tech skills, you likely will be out of work soon and will also likely never have a job again.

There are sophisticated, marketable non-high-tech skills that will continue to do fine. Doctors, lawyers, and so forth. But in general yes, you'd better skill yourself up or you are screwed.

Also the conclusion isn't so easy: 'get out while you still can'... and go where? This problem is global, as all the big ones are these days :-)
The Strangeloop talk seems to be quite similar to the one given at BrazilJS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84l0BrOlJwk (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlQTjb794as (part 2)
Indeed. Since message boxes and confirmations are used so frequently and often unnecessary users have trained themselves to just click on the far left or far right button to get rid of it. They don't read it, they don't want to understand what happened, it just interrrupted their flow and they want it to be gone. Pushing decisions to the user in form of confirmations won't ever really work probably due to a Pavlovian urge to close such things as fast as possible.
Hmm not so sure about the example code.. Shouldn't the code be checking for EINTR when calling read/write/etc..?
I wonder if a big part of the problem is I work from home, and I work all the time

FWIW, I find that when I spend a lot of time alone, social interaction can get awkward and I need a little time to get into the "flow" again.
I love the attention to detail. It feels super polished, and the simple design goes well in hand with all the art.
Hey, what book is that quote from? I can't really find anything using "never again". Thanks!
The search seems to be quite limiting. It only seems to recognise place names, the thing I miss most about google maps is searching for POIs.
Is that what you really want? To me it's just promoting the manipulation of other people. Because hey, it's a skill so it's ok.

Doesn't it bother you? To know that the person you are talking to, is mirroring your emotions, or offering sympathy, to manipulate you into liking them?

I very much prefer the Aspergers-like honesty. I would rather hear 9 harsh, blunt, honest criticisms a day and 1 genuine complement than to receive 10 fake, sugar-coated, vague, manipulative signals.

Don't think you'll be the only mastermind learning these and no one else will know about it. Keep in mind, if you do it, if you apply these techniques in your day to day interactions so will other people. And think about it for a second, from the perspective of a subject. Do you really want to be the subject to these social tricks and manipulations?

This thought truly bothers me. To hear a complement and not knowing if it was true and genuine or I was complemented simply because that person had read "How to influence people and win friends" last week and wanted to try his manipulation techniques on me.

Maybe instead of promoting these social skills we need to promote the appreciation of honesty and having some self control over our emotions.
About 2 years ago (time is flying) I explained how I did the same to support range queries over "n" attributes, the method ended up being in the book "MongoDB, the Definitive Guide" by Chodorow and Dirolf (O'Reilly):

http://chemeo.com/doc/technology

(Search for "Indexing For High Speed Search" to skip non MongoDB related information).
That ("how would you implement ruby array intersection operator & and what computational complexity does your implementation have") was actually one of my interview warmup questions. In ruby core it's done exactly like you described, using a hash table, but I didn't know that until after the interview. I proposed a slightly worse solution, with sorting both inputs and then walking them simultaneously, which was O(n*log(n)). Still got the job, though :)

As a side note, I think that tasks like "implement a data structure with following operations and calculate computational complexity for each operation" are much better for exam than trivia questions like "Name the heap operations used by heapsort and the asymptotic running time of each.", with all due respect to @cperciva.
I am enjoying these, but as a poster on your previous thread predicted, you're moving further away from anything resembling what 99% of today's programmers ever see...

Need a car analogy? Fine: you pitched this as "what every driver should know about driving", and you're talking about the intricacies of combustion engines. That is to say, it's interesting, may pin together some pieces of other knowledge, but of no real practical use to anyone who doesn't also fit in to the "and I'm a mechanic" demographic.
"Or do we want people who are better at allocating money to things that advance the species in general to have more ability to do more of that"

I disagree, I don't think most entrepreneurs invest to advance the species in general, from my point of view they invest in things that have a potential to make money, while the government has a better incentive to fund something useful but with less direct financial benefits.
But of course you can give a lot of counter-examples.
Or maybe just prompt the user to login when they hit "Create Question"
For login screens, this is the problem that the Secure Attention Key (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_attention_key) was intended to solve.

IMO this is why the constant pushing of the browser as a platform is more trouble than it's worth. Everything that your OS does now will be re-invented (badly, several times) in one or more of the different web-browsers, lost, found, queried in triplicate, standardised before finally being recycled as firelighter when the next "paradigm shift" takes over.
The problem is that for many years the browser's chrome/UI was in fact a place not hijackable by web sites. In contrast to things that appear within the normal client area as the often-spoofed yellowish notification bar of old Internet Explorer versions (the newer one at the bottom now sees this as well). I think Firefox opted for a very deliberate design in security-critical cases that will always appear from within the chrome and never overlay the page in a way that could be spoofed by clever CSS.

Of course, now with pages requesting to go fullscreen there isn't a browser UI anymore that could show things that cannot normally appear in the page content. Hitting F11 previously at least was something no web page could ever do by itself. On the other hand, having to wade through warnings like Firefox' SSL warnings probably scares away users from fullscreen games and developers from using the feature.

I wouldn't really have an answer to anything of that. I don't even know whether I embedded a question, I think it was just rambling :-)
Lodsys claims progress in fight over in-app purchase patents
well he's not going to achieve a speed greater than 700mph, somewhat less than an object entering the earth's atmosphere at 17,500mph
Asynchronous programming with Tornado
www.inbenta.com provides a similar service based on natural language processing of the users' questions through comments, email, phone and search engine queries. It is offered in many languages.
Colin, I've been programming for about 25 years now, in more languages and architectures than I can ever readily remember, and you're making me feel like a noob.

Thank you for that. :-)
I don't know if I should feel "okay" about not knowing the answers or if I should feel "dumb". Is this something as a system programmer today really need to know?
I think you are making the distinction because someone learned it consciously.

People who have high social skills likely do this stuff all the time, perhaps without realising it.

Of course people will speak negatively about "manipulating people" but the fact is that it's simply part of how the world goes round, in which case it's probably best to be one of the people who is skilled and resolve to use your powers for good.

The alternative would be trying to persuade highly sociable people to imitate aspies.

You can try and persuade everyone to be honest, but in a world full of honest people being the only liar will bring huge advantages.
Can someone explain why zeroarray2 is so much slower than zeroarray1 (regarding question 2)? I have profiled the two functions and it turns out for inner for-loop and the line which zeros out the entry in the array are much slower... (optimisations turned off). The only real difference is the name of the variables. Right? Has this something to do with memory alignment?
> contains snark that certainly does not raise the level of this conversation

Calling people that don't agree with you mediocre or apologists of mediocrity is just rude.
Sleep is kinda important (http://www.inc.com/margaret-heffernan/the-truth-about-sleep-...)
That texts are unique is simply an objective fact. As soon as you change just one letter, you have a new text with 'difference'. I'm saying this is not a useful perspective because it only gets interesting when you can point out what kind of difference there is and why it is important, and then you end up with something that higher quality texts may have in common.

While critics may have some difficulty telling authors or texts apart because of human limitations, computers attain very high accuracies with various authorship attribution methods. This underscores my point: if you focus on differences, you will end up identifying very particular things such as a particular author or even the style of a particular work, that's just the idea taken to its extreme.

On the other hand, I believe that the quality of a work, which is one kind of value indeed, can lie in commonalities instead of differences. I don't have a concrete example, but from reading literature I do get the feeling that there is something definite that they share. I don't mean something on the level of a trope, that would be too superficial. I think it's OK to admit that we don't know, but not a good idea to preclude it from being described as part of a taxonomy because it's supposedly only about differences. There's simply too much difference in all the unique things around us for that to be informative.
This is more of a #javascriptneckbeard project for which I have to give a healthy respect.
When you say "entrepreneurs" you must be thinking of the L'Oreal or Hilton heirs. I see lots of heavily indebted entrepreneurs in Europe taking on big personal risk, both financially and in terms of career risk. European entrepreneurs rely on bank loans much more than the typical U.S business. There's very little equity in many small businesses.

Enrepreneurs who are now wealthy often had to struggle for many years in poverty without much social security before they achieved that kind of success. Many fail as well. I think you're mixing up entrepreneurs and big corporations. Big corporations can absorb or avoid paying taxes in any particular country, but entrepreneurs often can't.

I do agree with you that monetary policy should be counter cyclical and it is. The ECB has tripled its balance sheet since 2007 and it has lowered interest rates to 0.75%, which is way below CPI. I agree that they should have been even more aggressive but there's a political reality as well.

Monetary policy is not the issue here. The problem is counter cyclical fiscal policy. It has to stand on both legs. If you don't run a surplus in boom times you're not going to be able to spend enough during downturns.

But our political systems seem to be structually pro cyclical. During boom times, the right wants to cut taxes or fund wars and the left wants to extend benefits. Nobody wants to run a surplus and pay down debt.
I deal a bit with arty types, and they tend to pride themselves on being able to identify products, along with designers and quoting how many hundred $'s something "costs"

I think it's a bit like nerds and bragging rights in being able to produce good explanations for difficult technical questions. Along that line of thinking, perhaps a stackoverflow karma / community recognition style system might be enough.
The "no view source" argument is pretty weak. Most major websites nowadays serve you unreadable compressed JS soup already. Personally, I'd love to have a cross-browser bytecode alternative to Javascript, preferably running in a VM accessible outside of a web browser.
I really liked the presentation of slides, and enjoyed using the arrow keys to navigate. It was fun, and could have been very boring (for me).. it made me read more than I would have.. It was good viewing those slides in isolation, made me study some of the functions with more focus.
You're right to bounce on the "advance the species" part, however I think one way to see it is to keep in mind that governments generally act in the interests of pressure groups, are inefficient and take decisions based on ideology more than merit.

All western governments, with some rare exceptions, are highly indebted. Those debts were just created to keep the machine running, not to make investments.

One could therefore say that governments destroyed wealth and contributed to an excessive growth of a financial economy through loans.

An individual taking the same course of action would end up being bankrupt and would not take millions of persons with him in the process.

Taxes are not just a question of rich vs poor.
Show HN: Obiwan: type checking for Python
GitHub Link: https://github.com/kishikawakatsumi/ClassicMap
In zeroarray1 the address to be zeroed goes linearly from 0 to (1024^2)-1. This generates less cache misses because the address is much more likely to already be in the cache, which is in turn because the address only differes by one from the previous value of the address.

zeroarray2 jumps around (0, 1024, 2048, 4096, ..., 1, 1025, 2049, 4097, ...) in a way that intentionally makes life difficult for the cpu's cache manager, and generating lots of cache misses.
120.000 feet (36576 m) skydive jump is today. Watch live
It's amazing that this could have worked as a Dragon 7. One engine failed and they still could have made it with one other engine malfunctioning. Bearing in mind the cost of the launches for SpaceX are forecasted to be significantly lower than old shuttles, this is all the more impressive.
There was a misshap though, since the Orbcomm satellite wasn't nearly put on the right orbit. I have no idea whether the onboard propulsion of the satellite will be enough to get into the desired orbit, but if they do manage it, it will be a testament to the quality and interest of fault-tolerant space operations.
I see, but what if I only have a mobile number available for some of my contacts. Will it send them a text asking them to join?

I'm sure it's going to be an awesome app though, I'll happily sign up. I'd like an easier way to take my friends with me. Also, I'd love Twitter integration.
Ask HN: Any hackers who won the DV lottery program?
The application opened yesterday in my country and I was wondering if I can apply.<p>I also plan on applying to jobs right after December. Anyone knows if not winning this lottery can damage prospects of H1B visas?
It's in the Apple App Store ( http://itunes.apple.com/app/classicmap/id566173771?mt=8 ). I presume that means Apple have looked at it, and approved it, and it won't be yanked in a while for breaking any terms of service,

right?
I would be very secure in my job if everyone I competed with for it had been an amphetamine addict since the age of ten.

On the downside, I dread to think of the code speed-freaks would churn out after 18 hours jazzed up, ten years into their addiction.
New Ransomware Disguised as SOPA (SOPA virus)
On the one assembly language I vaguely remember, it has to do with how mul is implemented. The 2nd function has to swap out the i repeatedly.
Will it be another closed-garden communication app, or will it follow established standards? (eg. this XMPP extension that allows for location/activity statuses http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0163.html)
so they can continue working on the idea while being able to afford basic human needs?
A simple rule of thumb is contiguous memory access = cache friendly => fast operations. zeroarry2's access to memory jumps by 1024 for every assignment. Far apart non-contiguous memory access is not cache friendly at all.
What is new? What are the new sources? The Silver Bug (see this FOIA from 1997: http://www.project1947.com/fig/sb/sb_html.htm ) and Avrocar have been known about for years.

The headline seems like they just wanted clicks.
I like that analogy but it's worse than you say:

2 of the questions are about drift racing (mutexs)
2 of the questions are about the design of the fuel injection control chip
1 question is a subtle question about the fuel injection control chip
It can be a legit dysfunction that starts getting a lot of false diagnoses once parents start thinking that the medication boosts academic performance whether or not the kid actually has the problem.
For those who are reading this and are new to software development, please don't let these questions put you off or take them as some sort of test of your skills. The questions pertain only to the poster's particular CS degree and to his particular experience, which for some reason he thinks is the only CS degree and experience that is valid.

Also note that you will come across people like this quite a lot in the software industry and you have to be careful not to let them get under your skin. They can be very difficult to work with. If you are a team lead and identify someone like this on your team then it can be very difficult to place them and you often have to gently coerce them into their own "special" area where they feel their talents are best used.
It doesn't credit Google as far as I can tell (the legal section just seems to be for the new iOS maps). The link to "Legal" is really small and there's no Google Logo (as Google had required previously)

Still it works if you all you need is map tiles (which I highly doubt what most people use Maps for)
Anonymous attack on Masonichip for Forced Chipping of Kids
"What every pilot should know" might be a better analogy. Pilots are more directly responsible for keeping their vehicle within safe conditions, and to do that they need to know more about their vehicles than car drivers.

Programmers affect and determine the operation of the computers their code runs on much more than a driver driving inside the lines.
So you are building an app to provide the convenience of skype stati (available, away, busy, invisible, offline) to people who use phones to call people?

Nothing wrong with that but I don't see me updating another app while the information is in most cases available somewhere else. For the app to be useful I would need to give it even more information than I do with all other platforms while the benefit is that people aren't annoyed because I don't take their calls.
I would not trust the Daily Mail when it comes to how great the UK is and how terrible other EU countries are.
Would love to see a Tour page or video with more info. I feel like I need to register an account to get a basic understanding of how it works.

It sounds like a great, idea though. Mainly as a user/consumer who often reads useless FAQs from people who just don't care.

Maybe you should get in touch with Kickstarter and use it for their project pages?
This story reminds me of a recent HN submission about a Brazilian entrepreneur whose business model was disrupting Visa.

The moral of both stories: industries that are old, set in their ways and ripe for disruption will use any means necessary to stifle innovation, from bribing (in poor countries with corrupt government institutions) to lobbying for artificially high barriers to entry (in advanced societies like Switzerland).
I agree with you that the experience could be better for the casual user, in fact we are publishing an update in a matter of days to allow anonymous questions and to move the "login" phase at the end of the process. Thanks for your feedback!
Oh God, Bravo’s Silicon Valley Show Looks Even Worse Than We Thought
The 1000 MPH Open Source Project
Convince Me Why I Should Ditch PHP for RoR
I'm a PHP developer and I want to kick the habit, but scared that moving to RoR won't yield any added benefit to my daily programming. What are some things I can do in RoR that PHP can't to keep me motivated in my decision to switch?
Google Finally Pushing for Tablet-Optimized Android Apps
He also did an IAmA in support of the project a few weeks ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/yc1ke/i_am_joe_kitting...
I think it is important to read the latest press release from SpaceX where they clearly state that the engine did not explode.

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20121008

I really wish that we had a perfect launch but that's not the reality. I don't think, technically, this hurts SpaceX. But once the perceptions are formed it is hard to change them even if you throw mountains of data/facts at them. Case in point the death panel buzz word that was used against Obamacare. I really wish this anomaly doesn't harm SpaceX.
Grunge Flag Textures